This invention relates to a voice architecture for transmission over a shared, contention based medium, and more particularly, to transmission of multiple voice calls on such a medium.
Traditionally voice is supported in telephone networks as a circuit switched service with a dedicated slot assignment. As a result, resources are dedicated for the entire duration of the call, which results in under-utilization of the bandwidth. However, a such service results in little jitter and minimal delay.
More recently, voice is being supported over internet protocol (IP), shipped as IP frames over data networks. This results in higher utilization of bandwidth at the cost of delay and jitter. There are many standards that digitize analog voice in trade offs of efficiency, bandwidth, processing power, and voice quality. Voice quality manifests itself in low jitter and small delay. Users of voice transmission facilities pay according to the Quality of Service (QoS).